When I started yoga, I saw it as something physical, an elaborate set of postures, bends, and stretches. Most of them I found difficult if not impossible to attain. Yoga clearly seemed to be a lot about fitness, something that was also in vogue. The pictures of extremely fit, flexible women and men, effortlessly smiling while performing some complicated posture, had an intimidating effect on me. I had always been playing sports and generally liked to move around a lot, but that didn't include doing more delicate things with my own body. Yoga, I assumed, was not for people like me.

To many European and North American visitors to India, Indian spirituality is one of the most fascinating aspects of Indian culture and reason for many to come. Visiting the ancient spiritual temples that abound all over India with their magnificent display of Hindu mythology, pilgrims who make colourful flower and fruit offerings to their preferred deity, entire families standing in line for hours just to take a quick bath under the sprinkling waters of some ancient holy source, with the ever present odour of sweet incense filling the spiritually-laden air – all these are impressions that many visitors of India seek and that have vividly enriched the memories of many travellers to India before.

The ascent of the 660 rock-cut steps, all of them polished smooth by uncounted bare feet of humble worshippers seeking to perform Darshan (“the beholding of a deity”) at Shravanabelagola, one of the oldest and most important Jain pilgrimage sites in the world, is truly worth each drop of sweat shed. The gigantic 18 meters tall and blindingly white gleaming statue of Lord Bahubali carved from a single piece of granite stone and located on the summit of the Indragiri Hill can be seen even from as much as 24 km afar and is considered to be the world's largest monolithic stone statue. Each day thousands of Jain pilgrims as well as curious visitors make their way up, passing the numerous smaller shrines. Even elderly or handicapped people get the chance to take a closer glimpse at the towering statue on top, as there is a palanquin transport service available to avoid the strenuous hike.

I recently read an article in the New York Times entitled “In India, Castes, Honor and Killings Intertwine”. Over the six years or so since I made my first journey to India, I have recounted to friends and acquaintances at home some of the anecdotes (I wince to use this word – as if abuse of women should ever be relegated to a mere anecdote) I have encountered in first, second, or third person regarding the ways in which women are abused, maimed, or sometimes killed, as in the case of the young girl in the aforementioned article. I always want to defend or make excuses for the country that I love. It’s true, there hasn’t been a case of sati [immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyre] in years (though I hasten to point out, there has been in my lifetime), but I recall reading of daily “kitchen fires” in the police blotter in the Bangalore newspaper years ago; and discovering that this was a twisted and polite allusion to an intentional act of violence often resulting in homicide, not an indication that the country needed to examine safety standards of stovetop ranges.

“What is the most wonderful sight in India – the strangest thing to be seen in all this land, where so much is strange? For my part, I am inclined to doubt whether anything can be witnessed more impressive and picturesque, more pregnant, too, with meaning and significance, than the Kumbh Mela, or great Pilgrim Fair, which is held, once every twelve years, where the waters of the Ganges and Jumna meet, below the wall of Allahabad. Until you have look upon one of these tremendous gatherings of humanity many aspects of Indian life and character must be hidden from you.”
Sydney Low during the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to India (1906)

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